The Dynamics of the Metaphoric Field: A Cognitive View of Literature

The Dynamics of the Metaphoric Field begins with the premise that the way we can make some progress toward agreement in literary theory is to examine how we know what we know. To this effect Nicolae Babuts undertakes to understand the workings of memory and to define the fundamental principles that guide it in its drive to meaning. The study establishes that we process reality and texts in quanta of energy, in terms of dynamic patterns that are the units of meaning. On the perceptual level, these patterns represent visual, auditory, or other sensory organizations, a kind of perceptual syntax of the world; on the textual level, they represent building blocks that are used in the writer's creation and the reader's re-creation of texts. In this view meaning is a consequence of the convergence of linguistic patterns and the syntax of perceptual events. The fact that evidence for the existence of dynamic patterns comes from various disciplines underscores the interrelatedness of cognitive sciences and literature and encourages us to believe that we are on the right track.
The study of memory and of textual dynamic patterns establishes certain fundamental concepts that are now defined not just in their theoretical modality but also in the act of performing their primary function. The disagreement about the role of reality in the creation and recreation of texts is traced to a blurring of the distinction between its material and symbolic identities and to an antiquated view of the "referent."
In the cognitive light the referential reality splits into two components: its material identity or things in themselves, which we cannot know, and its symbolic or coded identity, with which we deal through our senses and memory. The crucial difference between approaches with formalist tendencies and the cognitive view is that in the latter the textual language and patterns have a strategic correspondence to the symbolic face of the real. Other consequences follow.
In reading, memory re-creates the metaphoric field--the dynamic patterns and the original tension--of a text in a reserved space. The reader's entry into the field recalls the paradox of the circle of understanding, but the dilemma is now stripped of its speculative aura and defined in terms of memory's ability to contact and activate appropriate potentials. Under these circumstances, the beginning of the text regains its power to communicate foreknowledge. The entry into the field becomes a re-creation but also a spiritual anticipation, a leap unto a higher level of suspense. Mnemonic--that is to say, human--values retake their place in the equation of meaning. Above all, the study indicates that the space where meaning is produced and recognized as such is the space of human consciousness.